General themes
The main research focus of the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche is pelagic oceanography, which encompasses a diverse range of topics in biology, chemistry and physics. Our general goal is to understand and quantify processes in the marine environment and to quantify large biological and biogeochemical cycles.

LOV is a laboratory that encompasses many disciplines in oceanography that are interested in budgets, processes, and fluxes of material or energy, such that many studies involve multiple disciplines. This implies that our researchers must be knowledgeable of all the disciplines that are fundamental to oceanography (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.), and be able to conduct research at an international level, thus allowing them to participate in multidisciplinary national and international programs. One of the strengths of LOV is the complementary nature of the various disciplines that are represented in-house, which is a characteristic found in large oceanographic institutes around the world.

The main elements of LOV’s research theme are:

• Pelagic and coastal oceanography at regional and global scales
• The marine environment and its interaction with the atmosphere and the continents
• Biodiversity of marine organisms
• Remote sensing, in particular remote sensing from space, and the evolution of phytoplankton production at seasonal and multi-year timescales
• The interaction between spatial and temporal scales, especially in regards to processes relevant to biological production and the distribution of pelagic organisms

The major research aims of LOV can be summarized as:

• The structure and function of pelagic ecosystems at different temporal and spatial scales
• The characterization and the prediction of responses from marine systems, whether organic or inorganic, to natural and anthropogenic perturbations